In December, 1997, your predecessor and I signed a memorandum of
understanding (MOU) establishing a partnership between DoD and NARA on records
management initiatives. As a first step in this partnership, NARA agreed to
"evaluate the DoD Baseline Requirements for Records Management Applications
(RMA), with a view towards endorsing these requirements as an adequate and
appropriate basis for addressing the basic challenges of managing records in
the automated environment that increasingly characterizes the creation and use
of records."

NARA has completed an intensive review of the DoD requirements, as embodied
in Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software
Applications, DoD 5015.2-STD. We have determined that the DoD standard
generally conforms with the requirements of the Federal Records Act and the
implementing records management regulations found in 36 Code of Federal
Regulations 1220-1238. I am pleased to inform you that NARA will endorse the
use of the DoD standard by Federal agencies.

I am also pleased to send you the attached report of our evaluation. As the
report details, we found no critical shortcomings in the DoD standard.
However, during our review, we did identify four areas of concern. Two of the
concerns can be addressed in the next iteration of the DoD standard, and the
other two are most appropriately addressed through guidance supplementing the
standard. Of particular note is an issue concerning the intelligent
representation of user ID account names on e-mail records. This issue poses
significant technical challenges given the current state of technology.

These findings in no way jeopardize our overall endorsement of the current
DoD standard. However, DoD and NARA will need to address them in the future.
We have shared these concerns and findings informally with your staff, and I
understand they have responded positively. I am certain we can finalize a
common approach to all four issues through the collaborative effort
established in our MOU.

I will shortly communicate to other agencies that NARA does endorse the DoD
standard as establishing baseline requirements for managing records. It must,
however, be understood that this is not an exclusive endorsement. That is,
while the DoD standard is an appropriate basis for records management, there
may be other, equally valid ways to address this challenge. NARA is
participating in other partnerships which are exploring such alternatives.

In announcing NARA's endorsement of the DoD standard, we will need to draw
attention to the fact that, as DoD recognizes, DoD 5015.2-STD defines only a
baseline set of requirements for automated records keeping. There are a number
of additional questions that must be resolved in order to satisfy all the
established requirements for managing federal records. Each agency must
address some of these questions to fit their own environment, such as you are
planning to do by developing a manual detailing procedures to accompany the
implementation of any records management software. We recognize the necessity
of this effort and concur with it. We will gladly offer our assistance to your
staff during their development of this operational guidance. This guidance
should be useful to other agencies which decide to adopt the DoD standard. We
look forward to continued collaboration with DoD both on addressing these
implementation issues and on extending the baseline, as provided in the MOU.

It must also be clear that NARA's endorsement of the DoD standard is not an
endorsement of any of the products that may be certified as compliant with the
standard. As provided in the memorandum of understanding, NARA has initiated a
review of DoD's test and certification program for RMA products. I will inform
you of the results of this second stage of our review as soon as possible.

The two part review of the DoD standard and the certification program will
set the stage for further collaboration between our agencies in extending the
baseline that DoD has established. I look forward to an extensive and fruitful
partnership. These include extending the standard to accomplish both the
management of records over their entire lifecycle and classification marking
and redaction of records containing sensitive information.